Freefall
by Kirii
Summary: An Experiment in the Eighth Deadly Sin. Leilani Onakea is a hacker working for NEST. She works among the Autobots, but can she find love among them? Intentional badfic. Mary Sue. MS/Kaminari, MS/Sideswipe. Please flame.


**Title: **Freefall**  
Subtitle: **An Experiment in the Eighth Deadly Sin**  
Rating: **Arrrgh. Or R, for those who want an actual rating and not just an expression of disgust.**  
Pairings: **EventuallyLeilani/Kaminari and Leilani/Sideswipe. Also Ironhide/Ratchet for relief from arrrgh!!!-pairings.**  
Warnings: **Intentional Badfic. Mary Sue. Eventual girl-on-girl action, girl-on-mech action and mech-on-mech action. Abuse of descriptors and the word 'the'. This fic has it all. Have your gag buckets, brain bleach and S.O.S pads ready.**  
Author's Note: **Yes, I went there. To quote my sister; if bad authors can do it, it can't be that hard. Painful maybe, but not hard. Flames are encouraged and embraced with glee. Just let me live and I swear I'll get back to writing Goodfic again. This is just an experiment to see how many bad puns, clichés and disgusting Mary-Sue metaphors I can roll into one fic and get away with.

Takes place after _Revenge of the Fallen_ and has some characters from _The Veiled Threat_, which I actually have yet to finish reading.**  
Disclaimer: **I don't own the Transformers franchise and already I'm wishing I didn't own Leilani.

**Freefall  
An Experiment in the Eighth Deadly Sin**

**Chapter One**

The beaches of Diego Garcia were nothing like the warm, white-sand beaches of Maui. There was almost no one on the beach and in the background, rather than tall resort buildings and boardwalks, there were scattered barracks and roadways, dotted with various military vehicles amongst the trees and plants. Walking along these beaches, one was more likely to run into a soldier taking a run as personal training, rather than a tourist strolling along the beach to get some sun. Sometimes, the soldier one might run into wouldn't even be human, but a tall, living robot.

Twenty-three-year-old Leilani Onakea thought that she would never get used to that. Off the shore, the Hawaiian woman treaded the deep and warm waters as she watched one of the Autobots go by on shore. Her unusual blue-green eyes focused on the silver mechanical alien as Sideswipe skated along the shore on his wheeled feet. Two years ago, when she was just finishing college, you would never have been able to tell Leilani that she would one day be working with these strange beings. She would have told you that you were crazy before returning to her computer.

Leilani dove under the water as Sideswipe glanced her way. Though the young woman was far from being shy (for what was there to be shy about with a graceful body like hers?), there was something unsettling about the cold light of the Autobot's eyes on her. With her long brown hair drifting freely around her, she swam down, touching the shallows' floor before propelling herself along the bottom. Though she freely admitted that the ocean around the military island was nothing compared to the oceans of her home, she did still enjoy the occasional swim, exploring the shallows like she had back on Maui.

When her lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen, Leilani surfaced. She rose out of the water and took a deep breath of cool air. Her hair clung to her bronze skin, falling around her face, over her shoulders and along her ample breasts like a waterfall of liquid chocolate. Water trickled down her skin, leaving streaks that glistened in the sunlight as she once again treaded the water. She looked towards the beach and, not seeing Sideswipe on the beach, headed to the shore. As she waded out of the water, she pulled her hot pink bikini top back up, adjusting the strap in the back. Her light-weight robe and sandals were in a pile on the beach, waiting for her where she'd left them before running into the water.

"Have a good swim?"

Leilani jumped, giving a startled gasp. Throwing on her robe, she pulled it closed to hide her greatly exposed body from the eyes -- optics -- of the silver Autobot. She glared at him; she hated that a being so big could sneak up on her so quietly.

"What do you want, Sideswipe?" she asked.

"Nothing," Sideswipe replied. "I was just asking a question. Both you and Dr. Ishihara both seem to take pleasure from swimming in your planet's oceans. I'm curious about the purpose."

Leilani rolled her eyes at the mention of the scientist; she and Kaminari had never quite seen eye-to-eye. Both women were intelligent, athletic and well-accepted on base, but they'd gotten off on the wrong foot upon their first meeting and neither of them could be bothered to right things. She gave a sigh and slipped her sandals onto her sand-covered feet.

"Swimming doesn't really need a purpose," she told the Autobot. "It's more for fun than anything else. Some people take swimming very seriously and are famous for the sport, but when it comes down to it, swimming is just fun."

Sideswipe tilted his head as he took in what Leilani said. "So you're out here for fun?"

"Pretty much," Leilani nodded. She swept her hair back, clenching the length of it between her hands and wringing out as much salt water as possible.

"Seems silly to me."

Leilani gave him a smile. "Probably because your definition of fun is kicking Decepticon can," she teased.

Sideswipe laughed. "I see nothing wrong with that."

The young woman gave a laugh of her own, an echo like chimes on the wind. "I never said there was," she told him. Despite the vast differences between Sideswipe and herself, she found him easy to get along with, even if his size and features were rather daunting.

"Actually, Maggie asked me to find you," Sideswipe told her after a few moments. "She said to tell you break time's over."

Leilani gave a frown. Of course. She'd been out for a while now; it was high time she returned to her work with the other woman. After all, the work that she and Maggie, as well as a handful of others, did was important to N.E.S.T, the Autobots, and the security of the governments backing the military operations.

"Right then," she sighed. "I'd better get back."

She tied her robe closed and ran up the roadway to a nearby bunker. Pulling a card from the robe's pocket, she swiped it to gain access. She needed to shower and dress properly before she returned to work; even in an isolated location such as Diego Garcia, professionalism was everything.

* * * * *

Maggie Madsen was not a woman to be taken lightly. She was the very picture of the typical model (and she'd done some modeling to pay for college, so she knew what she was talking about), with mid-back length bleached blonde hair that cascaded down her shoulders in light waves, golden highlights shining in the lights of the office. Her blue gray eyes glistened under perfectly shaped dark eyebrows as she focused on her computer, typing rapidly on the keyboard as she hacked into the amateur website exclaiming the existence of a giant metal being spotted in Chicago.

Beneath the beauty laid a brilliant mind. Maggie was one of the best hackers out there, which was why, after Defense Secretary John Keller had retired, N.E.S.T had snatched her up immediately to work as part of their organization. Of course, with her, came her friend and advisor, Glenn Whitman, another hacker with exceptional skill. Maggie had taken the job with less enthusiasm than Glenn; while the boy-in-man's-clothing could never get enough of the alien robots that N.E.S.T worked with, Maggie preferred to work with her fellow humans. Not that alien robots weren't fascinating -- she had made friends with a few of the Autobots since the fight at Hoover Dam -- but Maggie was a signals analyst, not some hacker with a science-fiction fetish.

"You're late," she said, voice resonating with her native Australian accent. She hadn't even looked up from her computer when her teammate entered the Virtual Tactics and Defense office. She didn't need to; the moment the door opened, the scent of plumerias wafted into the air, a sweet fragrance that Maggie recognized as her teammate's favorite flower and body wash.

"Sorry," Leilani replied, setting her laptop onto her desk. "If Sideswipe had told me five minutes earlier that you'd called for me, I would have been here that much quicker."

"Was he flirting with you again?" Maggie joked.

Leilani slumped into her chair. "I hardly consider asking what the purpose of swimming is flirting."

Adam McAllister, another member of the VTD, looked up from his computer. He arched a brow at the two women in the officer. "Sideswipe flirts with you?"

"It's not flirting." Leilani rolled her eyes as she logged into her desktop computer. Honestly, why would they even consider it flirting in the first place? Besides the fact that Sideswipe was an Autobot and Leilani a human, there were way too many differences between them to consider any sort of conversation between them as flirting.

"How would that even work?" Adam asked, looking at Maggie. "A human and an Autobot."

"Beats me," Maggie shrugged, not taking her eyes off her monitor. "It's not anything I think about in depth and I'll thank you not to try to put any weird images in my head, McAllister."

"Thoughts like that keep me up at night," the brunet muttered, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Don't you have work to be doing?" Leilani asked Adam, leaning back in her comfortable, high-backed chair. She crossed her legs, propping them up on the legs of the swivel chair and balancing her keyboard across her thighs. She really didn't want to know why Adam stayed up to think about things like that.

"Right, okay."

Silence fell between the three of them for a while. The only times they spoke were when Glenn came in from his break to continue working and when Adam found a particularly interesting amateur website. Things were pretty laid back in the Virtual Tactics and Defense office. It was a small division, only the four of them and their supervisor, Sergeant James Daniel. Usually, they could go days without anything to really do. Their main job was to prevent any unwelcome intrusion into the N.E.S.T database. Helping track down and remove evidence of the Autobots on Earth was their secondary job and they typically had their hands full after the Autobots took out a Decepticon.

Adam, for one, whenever the sergeant was out of the office, as he frequently was, spent half his time chatting up teenage girls in sci-fi chat rooms. Glenn had a little more tact than that; he was content with listening to music through his headphones while playing the latest online game. Even Maggie and Leilani couldn't resist multitasking work and fun. Maggie, between tasks, would do a little online shopping, making sure to send any purchase to a friend in D.C., who would gladly hold it for her until she got leave to come pick it up.

Leilani wasn't particular on what she did when she wasn't working. She was always logged into her messenger, but she didn't go looking for people to chat up. Occasionally, she'd peruse her favorite online shop for something new. Sometimes, she'd go for a game, some role-playing game to occupy her time with. Her guilty pleasure was catching up on _Stargate SG-1 _fanfiction, but even then, she was a bit of a flake and never focused solely on it.

Today, though, she was spending her time working on something of her own. While she would never claim to be a good writer, she liked to dabble in writing the occasionally short story. She'd been working on this particular piece for a couple months now and was playing with the idea of sending it to a publisher when she was done. It wasn't much, just a short little romance. She'd set it in her hometown of Lahaina and was just bringing the main characters together for a night of wild passion under the stars.

It was just a ridiculous little fantasy she'd been toying with; the kind that never happened in real life. Her heroine, an intelligent native like herself, out on her own, running into a stranger with eyes the color of the sea after a storm and luscious locks of black hair as untamable as his spirit. Though they were just strangers, there was a spark between them that neither could deny and it eventually would bring them together in a fit of lust, bind them together as only love could.

It was the kind of story, she realized, that was only found in those dime-a-piece Harlequin novels. With a sigh, she saved what she'd written and closed out of the document. Forget sending it to a publisher, she doubted she'd ever finish writing such rubbish.

Her computer beeped at her and she lifted her ocean-colored eyes to the screen. Immediately, she sat up straight, returning her keyboard to the desk as she focused solely on her latest task. "I've got an intrusion into N.E.S.T information system!"

"Shit!" Adam cursed, closing out of the chat rooms to return to his job as his own computer beeped loudly. "I've got it, too!"

Maggie's eyes widened as she pulled up an analysis of the signal breaching N.E.S.T security. "My god, I know this signal!" she exclaimed. "Glenn, pull it up on yours!"

"Already done!" Glenn told her. "It's definitely the same signal!"

Maggie dialed their supervisor, alerting him to the situation. "Sergeant Daniel, we've got a Decepticon intrusion into the N.E.S.T database! Repeat, Decepticon intrusion!"

"On my way," Daniel told her. "Trace that signal, see if you can get a location on him."

"Yes, sir!"

All four VTD officers went furiously to work; Glenn and Maggie both tracing the signal while Adam and Leilani did everything in their power to block off any viral attack from the unknown assailant. Leilani kept her gaze on her computer screen, a single glistening bead of sweat rolling down a toffee-colored cheek as she worked. Her tongue flicked over glossy rose-painted lips and she held her breath. Across from her, Adam was holding back curses as he helped defend the N.E.S.T network.

When Sergeant Daniel came into the office after a short while, the assailant had been successful chased off. Though it was good that the threat was over, the situation had been resolved far too quickly for either Maggie or Glenn to get a full trace on the intruder. Leilani let go of the breath she'd been holding and slumped back into her chair.

"Did we get anything on the Decepticon?" Daniel asked, leaning over Maggie to peer at the Australian woman's monitor.

Maggie shook her head. "He pulled out too quickly to get an exact location."

"Closest we could get was southern India," Glenn added. "Maybe Sri Lanka."

"Maybe?" Sergeant Daniel cocked an eyebrow.

"The Decepticons -- the Transformers themselves -- don't have IP addresses that we can log and track like humans," Maggie explained. "They tap directly into the internet via their own communications systems, which we can only track to a point."

"And that's only with Autobots," Leilani spoke up. "With the Decepticons, it's even more complicated. The Autobots have kindly helped us learn their unique signatures. The Decepticons have unique signatures as well, but they all have the same signal, with makes it hard to find their energy signature. We have to break down the signal, then decode the scrambled signature."

Adam raised one hand, grabbing Daniel's attention. "Once we decode the signature, we could theoretically track the Decepticon, but that's only if he's stayed there. And we know how well Decepticons stand still."

Daniel was thoughtful for a moment as he took in this information. While he was the supervisor of the Virtual Tactics and Defense team, he was not a man who knew anything about what his team did. He didn't particularly care to learn, either; so long as the team did what was in their job description and didn't slack off, he didn't want to know exactly what they did. It would mean long explanations with words that meant little or nothing to him.

Seeing the sergeant's expression, Leilani spoke up again. "We could try to decipher the signature and attach a pseudonym to it, in case of future attacks." She turned to Maggie. "If we unscramble the signature and make a copy of it, we could, in theory, use it to block any future attacks by this particular Decepticon, correct?"

Maggie thought on that. "In theory," she agreed. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair with a slight frown. "However, it would take a lot of time and there could be an infinite number of possibilities to the correct signature."

"It's worth a shot," Leilani urged.

Sergeant Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose; his nerds were talking nerd talk again. He was lost and didn't care to try to make sense of what the two young women were talking about. "If it's worth a shot and there's even a small chance it could work, try it," he told Leilani. "Get one of the Autobots to help you if you need it. Keep me updated."

Leilani raised her hand in mock-salute. "Yes, sir!"

With that settled and things calm again, Daniel turned on his heel and left the office. With their supervisor gone and the threat to the N.E.S.T database over, Adam and Glenn returned to their computers, once again pulling up chat rooms and online games to kill time as their shifts continued. Maggie went about making a copy of the signal for Leilani.

"You're sure this is worth it?" Maggie asked as she copied the signal. "It's a pretty big 'if', unscrambling a Decepticon signal. Even Glenn couldn't get a full signature two years ago."

"I'm not saying I will, either," Leilani told her. She pulled her legs up onto the seat of her chair, twisting her body into a comfortable position. "But if I can get something worked out, with some help from the Autobots, we might be able to figure out a way to make the database secure against Decepticon intrusion."

"Putting us out of a job," the Australian woman pointed out.

"Nonsense," Leilani replied. "We'd still have to block other signatures."

"Still, that's a lot of work."

"That's why all of us will work on it."

Maggie pulled the flashdrive with the copy of the signal on it out of her computer, swiveled in her chair and handed the drive to Leilani. "If you think it'll work, I'm behind you, 'Lani," she told the other woman. Leilani smiled. "Thanks, Mags."

Maggie sighed and turned back to her computer, slumping back in her chair again. She tilted her head as she studied a pair of gorgeous Italian pumps that she'd been debating on purchasing. "Now I've just got to decide if I really need another pair of shoes."

Leilani laughed. "You can never have enough shoes."

* * * * *

Later that night, Leilani, Maggie, Glenn and Adam were let off shift and their places taken over by the night team. The group left the bunker where they worked and caught a shuttle across base. Though the island base was intended as a naval operations base, with the formation of N.E.S.T and the arrival of its numerous civilian workers, like the VTD teams, an apartment complex was built on the edges of the base for them. It was a small complex, housing no more than the hundred-fifty civilians on the atoll.

Maggie and Leilani were neighbors in the complex, in apartments C10 and C11, respectively. Glenn and Adam resided on the B level of the complex. Maggie and Leilani ascended the stairs together, heading for their separate apartments. As they went, they spoke about Leilani's idea of creating a signature block against the Decepticons. As previously discussed, both of them knew that it would take a long time and a lot of frustrating work before they had anything they could work with, but as they continued to talk of it, the more eager both women became to try it.

"I foresee all-nighters," Maggie said.

"So long as Glenn doesn't come in again and Adam doesn't bring beer," Leilani told her. "We don't need a repeat of August nineteenth."

"If I ever find another copy of that video, I may have to kill Adam," Maggie muttered, rolling her eyes. "I know he has a copy of it somewhere and plans to use it against us. Or post it to YouTube."

"If he posts it to YouTube, _I'll_ kill him. It's one thing if we get drunk and a little friendly. It's a whole other thing if it's recorded and posted online."

A slight cough behind them had both Leilani and Maggie whirling around to see who'd overheard them. Just exiting her own apartment, Dr. Kaminari Ishihara, stood in the hallway, a single slender eyebrow arched slightly at the two other women. Leilani gave a silent groan. Great, of all people to overhear them, it _had_ to be Kaminari; as if the cyberneticist didn't have enough reason to dislike her as it was.

"Kaminari," Maggie smiled awkwardly. "I didn't know you'd returned from Tsukuba."

The Japanese woman regarded her for a silent moment. "I've only just returned," Kaminari told her. "I was on my way to visit Knockout."

"I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

Kaminari nodded. She gave Maggie a small bow before locking her gaze on Leilani. Neither woman spoke, a silent, but temporary truce between the two of them. Leilani, for one, was too tired to start up the argument between Kaminari and herself that had begun when the two intelligent women had first met and had yet to reach a conclusion.

"I will be seeing you later, perhaps," Kaminari said.

"Perhaps," Leilani mumbled.

Having nothing else to say to either Maggie or Leilani, Kaminari turned on her heel, her long black hair twirling around her as she did so. She headed for the stairs, the low heels of her boots clicking against the hard floor. As soon as she was out of sight, Leilani grumbled.

"Can't stand that woman."

Maggie rolled her eyes. She wasn't quite sure what had gone down between Leilani and Kaminari, knowing only that it was some sort of disagreement between hacker and scientist. To be honest, she thought that both of them were being stubborn and should just drop it. It made encounters like the one they'd just experienced awkward; more so than having Kaminari overhear about the video Adam had shot of the kiss between her and Leilani.

That brought back to mind, Maggie mentally swore to hit Adam next time she saw him as she unlocked her door. "I'll see you in the morning, 'Lani."

"Good night, Maggie," Leilani nodded, unlocking her own door and heading inside.

_**Author's Note:**__ Okay, so that's the first chapter. I'll be getting back to my other fics now until I decide to work on the next chapter. To clarify a few things, I would like to mention that I know next to nothing about hacking and tracing signals, so everything said above about tracing a Decepticon signal is complete BS on my part. No, Maggie is not a lesbian, or even bi, in this fic; the kiss between her and Leilani was strictly one-time-only, brought on by alcohol and egged on by Adam and Glenn. _


End file.
